Report of the First Annual Exhibition of Ingenuity and Design: Held in the City of Philadelphia, from the 1st to the 9th of May, 1857 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Report of the First Annual Exhibition of Ingenuity and Design: Held in the City of Philadelphia, From the 1st to the 9th of May, 1857

And clear. So the monuments that bear the inscription of the great ness, the skill and the usefulness of the American mechanic, are as broad as our common country, and as clearly defined as our rail roads, canals and public and private buildings. When I seek for evidence of the estimation in which the skilful mechanic is held, in the works that he has wrought. The great difficulty is not to find the evidences thereof, but rather to select the few and striking from the countless number. The memorials of his greatness and might are so universal that the record thereof might be written as was that of the great architect, who buried in the crypt of his great cathe dral, merely sought his honor in the surrounding magnificence and proportion. The monumental marble securing testimony to his greatness, commanding those who would hunt up his memorial to look around. Circumspice. So he that would desire to estimate the greatness of the mechanic, has merely to look around. He sees it in every building that by the hand of skill has been erected for the great purposes of manufacture, trade, commerce, or luxury: adorned as it is by the hand of genius. Mere genius herself would never leave the imperishable mementoes of her conceptions, if it were not for the mallet and chisel of the artisan, the pencil of the artist, and the tool of the engraver. We see it at home, in that wondrous fascination that has curbed the wildness of Schuylkill's streams and taught that river, that for thousands of years only played and frol licked in the sunshine - Or reclined beneath the shades of the woods that gather along the banks, stealthily listening to the breathing of the Young Brave's words of love to his dusky mistress, - 0r lifting up her mirrored surface that her beautiful features might be reflected therein, as she dressed herself for her bridal -that there was something more for rivers to live and flow for than this, (poetical and beautiful as it was). So that we see her educated and trained by the hands of mechanical skill, now ministering health.

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